One of our very own, Derek Van Vliet, weekly columnist on social bookmarking and social media, has gotten profiled along with a 20 other prominent individuals in a recent column in the Wall Street Journal.
DEREK VAN VLIET/”BloodJunkie”
POSTS ON: Netscape
WHO HE IS: A 27-year-old computer programmer
HOW HE DOES IT: At Digg, Mr. Van Vliet says he cultivated friendships with other users, which helped drive interest in his postings: That renown earned him a place at Netscape, where he now gets paid to post links
The article discusses the influence of social bookmarking tools such as Digg, Netscape, Del.icio.us, Stumbleupon, Newsvine, and Reddit, and how they’ve influenced things in the context of how people find “News” in general.
Near the end they list 20 prominent social bookmarkers, giving a tip of the hat to individuals who contribute prominently to all six services, where they’ve come from, and why they do what it is they do.
Given how large and influential these services are, they do spend a fair bit of time talking about how some marketing firms might be targetting individuals who seem to have a large influence over these sites, and the payola fiasco that marked the end of last year at Digg.
And that’s part of the reason why I brought Derek on board. No matter what your opinion of things like Digg and Netscape are, they’ve grown to the point where you just can’t ignore them.
[Cheap plug alert] Check in every tuesday or so for Derek’s column, because I think he brings a rare and regular look on social bookmarking from an insider’s perspective. For example, his piece on the psychology of why people participate to the extent they do was really quite telling, particularly as he is one of those “people”. [/Cheap plug alert]
